Whiskey River is a quiet Arizona mountain town—until it’s rocked by murder. The death of Laura Swann Fletcher, the beautiful wife of charismatic senator Alan Fletcher, makes headlines across the nation.

Trace Callaghan’s job is to solve Laura’s murder, and solve it quickly. As the sheriff of Whiskey River, he has a reputation for unwavering logic and deliberate action. But this case is unlike any he’s ever handled before—because Laura’s sister, Mariah, insists on being fully involved, an involvement that extends beyond seeing her sister’s killer unmasked.

In this twisted case packed with illicit desires and dark secrets, everyone is a suspect. And nothing is what it seems.…

Praise for Confessions by

“Masterfully weaves a tale of momentum and curves. Between the intrigue and the steamy romance, you’ll be left breathless.”

—RT Book Reviews

“JoAnn Ross takes her audience on a thrilling roller coaster ride that leaves them breathless.”

—Affaire de Coeur

“Touches of humor nicely relieve the suspenseful nature of the intriguing and intricately plotted tale. Bravo!”

—The Paperback Forum

“A hot, steamy mystery sure to keep the reader guessing right up to the final climax. A page turner.”

—A Little Romance

Confessions

JoAnn Ross

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To Jay

Dear Reader,

Although I’ve since moved back home to the Pacific Northwest, in 1996, while my husband and I were living in Arizona, I wrote much of Confessions at our mountain cabin set in the middle of an old growth forest high on the Mogollon Rim where this story is set. Although Whiskey River is a fictional town, the local history and landscape are very real.

One of the themes in all my stories is family. Of course, not all families are formed by common ancestry, but by bonds of the heart, born from friendship, loyalty and love. As Mariah Swann knows all too well, tangled blood ties can often complicate family issues—exaggerating wounds and leading to resentment and regret.

What begins as a trip home to make amends

becomes an unexpected journey of self-discovery. I hope you’ll enjoy, as I did while writing Mariah and Sheriff Trace Callihan’s story, following along as the Emmy-winning television crime show writer struggles to find not only her sister’s killer, but acceptance, healing and ultimately, her own true-life happy ending.

JoAnn

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter One

Laura Swann Fletcher had never realized how long five minutes could be. Especially when you were holding your breath.

She scowled at the vial atop the cultured marble countertop, as if intimidation could speed up whatever mysterious chemical reactions were taking place inside it.

Heat lightning flashed outside the bathroom window, hinting of the storm to come. A distant taste of rain rode on the sultry air. Normally, summer storms in Arizona’s high country never bothered Laura.

But tonight was different. Tonight she felt as if the electricity had gotten into her blood, making her edgy.

“Dammit, hurry up,” she begged. As if she didn’t have enough to deal with. “Please, hurry up.”

She took a deep breath that should have calmed, but didn’t. “It’s only stress,” she insisted, as if saying the words could make them true.

Perhaps she should have taken Fredericka Palmer up on that offer of Valium. Only last week her longtime best friend had professed concern about her. If only Freddi knew the whole story.

“Dammit, get hold of yourself.” Laura hardly recognized the high, nervous voice. She pressed her palms against her rib cage and, taking several more deep breaths, willed herself to relax.

But her mind continued to churn restlessly, tossing up the myriad problems that had been plaguing her. Problems without end. Dilemmas without solutions. Nerves humming, Laura decided to see if one all-important call she’d been waiting for had come while she’d been out buying the home pregnancy kit.

The answering machine was downstairs, in the den. The red light was blinking, signaling four calls. She pushed the Rewind button. Then, Play.

Unbearably restless, she prowled the plank floor.

Beep. “Laura. It’s your father.” His recorded voice was as gruff as always, but she thought perhaps it was only her imagination. His next words confirmed that it wasn’t. “I heard a story today that damn well better not be true. If you’re there, pick up.”

There was a slight pause as he waited for her to do as instructed. As she always had. “Hell.” Another frustrated pause. “When I get back from Santa Fe, you and I are going to have a talk. Because you’ve got a lot of explaining to do, girl.”

So, he’d found out. Even as Laura reminded herself that she’d been going to tell him herself, painful memories, buried but never forgotten, snaked through her.

She looked down at her watch.

Two more minutes.

She continued to pace.

Beep. “Laura, it’s Alan. Thunderstorms kept us on the ground at National, now we’re stuck on the runway at O’Hare. We’re going to be late getting into Phoenix, then with the ninety-minute drive to Whiskey River, it’ll probably be past midnight before I get home. Don’t bother waiting up.”

It was not the first time her husband had been delayed while on a trip with Heather Martin, his ambitious and sexy chief of staff. Laura doubted it would be the last. The difference was, this time she honestly didn’t care.

Alan Fletcher was a rising political star, the brightest, most promising light in the Republican political firmament. Having won reelection to the U.S. Senate by a landslide, he was being touted as the party’s best hope to regain the White House.

Laura had never enjoyed living in Washington. She hated the artifice, the parties that were nothing but power plays, the emphasis on political prestige rather than character. The role of senate wife had been difficult enough. The idea of becoming First Lady gave her hives.

Beep. “Hi, Laura. It’s Mariah. Kill the fatted calf, the prodigal daughter is coming home! Do I have a lot to tell you! Guess it’ll have to wait until I show up on your doorstep, which should be around midnight, which I know is an ungodly hour, but I’m dying to share my news with my big sister. Love ya.”

Damn. Laura dragged a trembling hand through her auburn hair. Trust Mariah to choose this weekend to return to Whiskey River. Nothing like throwing a lit match into an already volatile situation.

Then again, Laura considered, if anyone could appreciate what she was about to do, it would be the woman who, like their glamorous mother, had been banished from the Swann family.

She looked at her watch again.

Only one more minute.

Beep. “Hi.” The deep, intimate voice sent a familiar heat surging through Laura.

“I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. Hell, the truth is, I’m worried about you, babe. I still wish you hadn’t insisted on doing this alone.

“Christ, Laurie—” she could picture him dragging his hands through his thick black hair “—I don’t remember you being so stubborn twenty years ago. If you had... Oh, hell. Forget I said that. One day at a time, right?”

“One day at a time,” Laura whispered.

It was the same thing she’d been saying for months. The problem was, she knew Clint Garvey would not wait any longer. The last few times they’d managed to be together, they’d wasted valuable time—time they could have spent making love—arguing.

Finally, last weekend, Clint had issued an ultimatum. She knew, with every fiber of her being, that if she didn’t keep her promise to leave her husband, she would lose the only man she’d ever loved.

She sighed as she looked down at her watch again.

Finally!

The indicator’s damning red Plus sign confirmed what she’d suspected all along. It hadn’t been stress that had caused her to feel so tired lately. And it hadn’t been flu that had brought about the occasional bouts of morning queasiness.

She was pregnant.

With her lover’s child.

Timing, Laura considered weakly, was indeed everything.

With her back against the wall, both literally and figuratively, she slid down to the tile floor, wrapped her arms around her bent legs and rested her forehead on her knees.

What on earth was she going to do? A fleeting dread shot through Laura. Her first thought was that Clint would think she’d been lying when she’d assured him that she could not get pregnant. But how could she have known otherwise? After having spent years trying to conceive?

When pollsters had informed her husband that a pregnant wife was worth from eight to fifteen points in the opinion polls, Alan had begun dragging her to infertility clinics all over the country. None of the increasingly esoteric, uncomfortable and horribly embarrassing treatments had worked.

Finally, last year, after her thirty-sixth birthday, Laura had given up the quest for a child. Alan, needless to say, had not been pleased. It was, after all, a great deal easier to campaign on a family values platform with a smiling wife and darling children by your side.

Alan. Laura groaned. Her husband was going to be absolutely furious. What if he attempted to pay her back for her infidelity by refusing to grant her a divorce? Worse yet, what if he decided to claim this child for his own?

“I won’t let that happen!”

Laura reminded herself that her husband’s most consistent personality trait was that everything Alan Fletcher said, everything he did, including marrying her, was geared solely toward enhancing his career. If he attempted such a ploy, she’d hold her own press conference and tell the entire world the truth.

Ronald Reagan had proven that a divorced man could get elected president. But would voters choose a candidate involved in a messy paternity battle? Laura didn’t think so.

“It’s going to be all right,” she assured herself. And her baby. “Granted, this complicates things. But Alan will see that a quick, quiet divorce is in his own best interests.”

Latching on to that optimistic thought, she pressed her hands against her still-flat stomach in an unconscious gesture of maternal protection.

Her churning mind gradually calmed as she began to view her unborn child—hers and Clint’s child—as a reward for all the pain they’d suffered.

There would still be problems. Problems with her autocratic father, with Alan, with the press. And there was no way this baby could ease her current troubles regarding the ranch.

But as she ran a bath in the ancient, lion-footed copper tub, for the first time in a very long while, Laura felt capable of sorting everything out. A heady, forgotten confidence flowed warmly through her veins. Dual feelings of joy and wonder bubbled up from some hidden wellspring deep inside her.

Sometimes miracles really did happen.

Laura was soaking in the perfumed water when the storm that had been threatening earlier arrived. The sharp staccato of rain sounded on the roof. Thunder rumbled. A bolt of lightning forked just outside the window.

Suddenly, a sound like a Klaxon blare echoed through the house.

“Dammit.” An irritating flaw in the security system was that the sensors on the windows couldn’t tell the difference between a storm rattling the glass or an intruder breaking in.

She rose from the water, wrapped a towel around herself and ran back downstairs, leaving a trail of wet footprints. After deactivating the blaring alarm, she placed a call to the sheriff’s office—which was automatically alerted each time the alarm went off—assuring the dispatcher it was a false alarm.

“Stupid thing,” she muttered, clutching the towel to her breasts as she glared at the computer control panel. Alan had been promising to change the system for months. After tonight, Laura vowed, she was just going to tear the damn thing out.

At the age of thirty-seven, Laura was determined to reclaim control of her life. Along with the house and the 20 thousand acres of prime Arizona ranch land her grandmother Ida Prescott had bequeathed her.

After years of unhappiness, she’d returned home to Whiskey River. Where she belonged. And where she had every intention of spending the rest of her life with the man who, for eight blissful hours, in what seemed another lifetime, had been her husband.

Laura returned back upstairs, traded her towel for a long seafoam silk nightgown, then climbed into the cedar log bed.

Knowing she’d never be able to fall asleep, she sat bolt upright and twisted her hands together atop the Sunshine and Shadows quilt she and Clint had unearthed in a quaint Shenandoah Valley antique shop during a clandestine, love-filled weekend. The same weekend their child had been conceived.

The storm stalled overhead, wrapping the house in its grip. Rain pounded against the windows. Thunder boomed like cannon fire; psychedelic flashes of lightning streaked across the sky. Wind wailed outside the bedroom window like a savage spirit.

It was going to be, Laura thought, a very long night.

Although she’d not considered it possible, Laura eventually fell asleep. She dreamed of Christmas, could actually smell the pungent scent of the pine tree taking up most of the living room. Beneath the tree were gaily wrapped presents. Enough toys to fill F.A.O. Scharwz spilled over the floor.

A fire blazed in the fireplace; fat white flakes drifted down like snowy feathers outside the window, creating a scene straight out of Currier and Ives.

Laura saw herself sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace, Clint sitting beside her. A little boy with her husband’s jet hair and solemn blue eyes sat on her lap, listening intently as his father read aloud from Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

It was an idyllic scene, born of Laura’s most private yearnings. One she was loathe to leave. Which was why, when the sound of the bedroom door opening filtered into her consciousness, she fought waking up.

The bedroom lamp, operated by a wall switch beside the door flashed on. Still struggling to hold on to her dream, which was rapidly disappearing like morning mist over the tops of the tall ponderosa pines outside the ranch house, she mumbled an inarticulate complaint.

The dream faded from view. Laura reluctantly roused, blinking against the blinding light.

Her sleepy mind recognized the familiar face. As her lips curved in a groggy, puzzled smile, a sound like an early Fourth of July firecracker shattered the nighttime stillness.

Startled, and unaware she’d been shot, Laura pressed her hand against the searing heat at her breast. Crimson blood flowed over her naked flesh, staining her fingertips.

Still uncomprehending, she stared up at her attacker, tried to ask Why? but discovered she’d gone mute. A mist covered her eyes.

Silvery rain snakes streaked down the bedroom window. Her wounded heart continued to beat.

Pumping out precious blood.

Laura’s last conscious thought was regret that she hadn’t told Clint about their baby.

And then, as a second sharp retort filtered through the fog clouding her mind, Laura Swann Fletcher surrendered to the darkness.

Chapter Two

“Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into,” Mariah Swann muttered.

Her fingers gripped the steering wheel of her new fire-engine red Jeep Grand Cherokee. A drenching downpour streamed across the windshield, as the ineffectual swish swish of the wipers added accompaniment to Travis Tritt singing on the CD player about the perils of falling in love with an unfaithful woman. The storm, which had stuck like glue overhead all the way from her Malibu beach house had her two hours behind schedule. The digital clock on the dashboard said two o’clock. In the morning. She still had another twenty miles to go before she reached Whiskey River. And then there was that death-defying drive up to her sister’s ranch.

“You’ve been gone ten years, dummy,” she scolded herself for her impatience. “What’s another two hours, more or less?”

It shouldn’t matter. But it did. Because recently she’d been thinking about Laura. A lot.

The time had come for making amends. For healing old wounds. And who better to begin with than the woman who, once, had been Mariah’s best friend?

Her thoughts in a turmoil as she relived the tempestuous day she’d left Whiskey River, Mariah almost didn’t see the white barricade blocking the roadway. She slammed the brake pedal to the floor, grateful for the antilock brakes that kept her from sliding through the barricade into the swirling, churning waters.

The rain had caused the river to flood its banks. Attempting a crossing, especially in the dark, would not only be foolhardy, but possibly deadly.

“Damn!”

Mariah glared out at the raging river, at the rain streaming down the windshield, at the stormy sky and considered her options. She could sit here, wait until dawn, and check out exactly how deep the water was running. Or she could turn around, head back the way she’d come, get a motel room in Camp Verde and wait the storm out.

Choosing caution for once, she managed, just barely, to make a U-turn. Fifteen minutes and thirty-five dollars later, she was sitting on a too soft mattress in the Pinewood Motel, telephone receiver in hand trying to get through to her sister, so she could advise Laura not to wait up.

Mariah frowned at the busy tone. “Who could she be talking to at nearly three in the morning?” She tried once more. Again, the line rang busy.

“Maybe she took the phone off the hook.” Mariah wondered if Laura was avoiding her. It wouldn’t be all that surprising, considering their rocky past. But during the past two years when they’d begun speaking again, she’d hoped that she and her sister had put those days behind them.

Perhaps the storm had knocked down the lines.

“Shit.”

Patience had never been Mariah Swann’s long suit. It wasn’t now. She dug through her purse, searching out the cigarettes she’d bought in Kingman, swearing, as always, they’d be her last. She located the already crumpled pack, shook a cigarette loose and picked up the matches from the tin ashtray on the bedside table. The matchbook cover suggested she was only a free test away from a career as a commercial artist.

As she lit the cigarette, drawing the acrid smoke into her lungs, she could almost hear Laura lecturing her, the same way she had the first time Mariah had gotten caught smoking in the girls’ bathroom at school.

Their mother, unable to stand the remoteness of ranch life, had fled Whiskey River—and her domineering husband. The same day Margaret McKenna Swann packed her Louis Vuitton suitcases and returned to Hollywood, Matthew Swann had filed for divorce.

Angry, unable to understand their mother’s defection, and chafing under her father’s iron hand, Mariah became the rebellious Swann daughter. Which left Laura, by default, the role of the solid, responsible daughter.

Only lately had Mariah begun to understand how having so much responsibility dumped on Laura’s shoulders at such a young age must have cost her older sister. Not that Laura had ever complained.

Except the time she’d shocked everyone by eloping with Clint Garvey. The ill-fated marriage had lasted less than a day.

After their father brought her home Laura never mentioned Clint again. A few years later, she married the man her father had chosen for her, and if the glowing articles Mariah read in all the magazines were any indication, her sister was happy.

But sometimes, when the camera lens was focused on the senator while Laura stood loyally in the background, a photographer would capture a candid, unpracticed expression on her face. An expression so filled with sadness that Mariah wanted to cry.

“I’ll make it up to you, Laurie.” Guilt and regret snaked through her. “I promise.”

Unable to sit still, Mariah began to pace and smoke. Waiting for morning.

* * *

Trace Callahan was dog tired. Throughout the night he’d driven the back roads, setting up barricades in the pouring rain, trying to keep idiot vacationers and drunk residents of Mogollon County from driving their four-wheelers into the raging Whiskey River.

When he’d first applied for the job of sheriff, he couldn’t help thinking of the old days when cowboys got drunk and smashed up Whiskey River’s saloons. These days, kids got drunk and smashed up their daddies’ pickups.

He hung his dripping poncho on the rack by the front door and tossed his hat onto a nearby table. Rotating his aching shoulder, which went stiff when it rained, he went into the kitchen, ignoring the trail of muddy footprints he left in his wake.

He opened the refrigerator and had just pulled out the beer he’d been thinking about for the last hour, when the phone rang. The caller I.D. screen announced the call was from his office.

“I told you I was going off duty, Cora Mae,” he barked into the mouthpiece. “This had better be important.”

“It is if you consider a possible one-eighty-seven in progress important, Sheriff,” Cora Mae Jackson shot back.

A wave of adrenaline rushed through his body. Fatigue was immediately forgotten. “A one-eighty-seven?”

A murder? In Whiskey River? Impossible. There hadn’t been a murder in the Arizona mountain town since 1957, when Jared Lawson got drunk at a family Thanksgiving dinner and shot his mother-in-law to death over a white meat–dark meat argument.

“A one-eighty-seven,” the night dispatcher repeated. “At Senator Fletcher’s ranch.”

Trace could feel his body relaxing again. He hunched his stiff shoulder, holding the receiver against his neck as he unscrewed the beer cap.

“You mean a possible burglary.” There’d been at least a half dozen false alarms at the ranch. Trace wished Fletcher would either get the damn system fixed, or tear it out.

“After thirty-five years I should know my codes, Sheriff,” Cora Mae sniffed. “I meant a murder. The senator just called in on 911. He’s been shot. He thinks his wife was shot, too.”

Trace’s pulse rate soared. “Is the gunman still in the house?”

“The senator said he heard them run out. He thinks there were two of them.”

Trace slammed the bottle down onto the counter. Foam ran over his hand. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

“I believe I did, Sheriff.”

“Dispatch the county medical unit,” Trace instructed. “And get hold of J.D.”

“J.D. was here when the call came in. He’s on his way to the ranch now.”

“Radio him and let him know I’m on the way. Oh, and tell him not to touch anything.”

“Ten-four,” she said. Trace would have had to have been deaf to miss the smug satisfaction in the dispatcher’s voice.

As he marched back out into the stormy night, Trace remembered a time when he’d genuinely loved being a cop. When he’d been filled with an overwhelming need to help.

He’d especially enjoyed being a homicide detective—the murder police. The top of the rung, the cream of the crop. The goddamn best. He’d gotten off on the crime scenes, the countless cups of coffee, the chain smoking, the pursuit, the face-to-face confrontation with a killer. And that inimitable sound of handcuffs clicking around the wrists of the bad guys had never failed to give him an adolescent rush.

He woke up each morning juiced, ready to hit the streets and save the world. But that had been in what now seemed like another lifetime.

Unfortunately, justice had proven to be not only blindfolded, but deaf and dumb as well and Detective Sergeant Trace Callahan had learned the hard way that one man couldn’t save the world from itself.

Now all he wanted was a chance to build himself a quiet, uneventful life where he didn’t have to worry about some coked-up drug dealer pumping bullets into him. As he climbed into the black-and-white Suburban, Trace considered that he thought he’d found exactly that when he signed his contract six months ago.

Cursing whatever lowlifes had so rudely intruded on his peaceful existence, he gunned the engine and headed, emergency lights flashing, toward the Fletcher ranch.

Whiskey River was sleeping as Trace drove through the darkened streets. Even in the slanting rain, the town had a certain charm about it, a quaintness that had little in common with the dirty business of murder.

Whiskey River, Arizona, was home to 350 full-time residents and at least triple that many during the summer, when vacationers came streaming north to escape the desert heat. If it looked familiar to first-time visitors, it should. Whiskey River had served as a movie set on more than one occasion.

Gene Autry, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood had all ridden horseback down Main Street. So had Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp, but the make-believe cowboys had bigger displays in the local historical museum.

Originally settled more than fifteen hundred years ago by prehistoric people classified by archaeologists as the Mogollon Culture, the area had subsequently been home to Apaches, soldiers, prospectors, loggers and ranchers. While Tombstone residents were making headlines by shooting at each other, Whiskey River became known for its taverns and brothels.

Once upon a time, settlers had run into town for protection from marauding Indians. These days citizens tried to liven things up again by holding rodeos at the fairgrounds.

Five miles outside of town, Trace turned onto a narrow graded road that snaked its way in a breath-stealing ascension up the rocky escarpment of the Mogollon Rim.

He arrived at the ranch right behind the ambulance.

His deputy’s black-and-white was parked in front of the house. The bubble gum lights atop the cruiser were sending out flashing blue strobes. The driver’s door was open. As he passed the patrol car, Trace cursed and yanked the keys from the ignition. A recent graduate of University of Arizona, with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, J.D. Brown was intelligent, enthusiastic and showed a willingness to learn. He was also green as new grass and prone to the same mistakes made by rookies in jurisdictions everywhere.

The deputy was waiting at the door. “The senator’s in the den, just to the right of the front door,” he told the medical team. “He’s been shot in the side.”

“Is he conscious?” the female paramedic asked.

“In and out.”

“What about the wife?”

The deputy frowned. “She’s upstairs. But take care of the senator. It’s too late for her.”

“You sure?” Trace asked.

“She was ten-seven when I got here,” J.D. insisted.

Ten-seven. The police code for Out of Service. Crude, but applicable, Trace decided. “I spent summers working in the emergency room at Louis R. Pyle Memorial,” the younger officer, the son of a nurse, reminded Trace. “I sure as hell know a lost cause when I see it.”

Trace accompanied the trio into the book-lined den where he found a man clad in a pair of paisley silk boxer shorts sprawled on his back on the floor by the doorway. He was in his midforties, with the kind of firm, lean body that came from working out. His deep tan and sun-streaked hair suggested afternoons spent on a Georgetown tennis court. A small amount of blood was draining from what appeared to be a single wound in his side. He’d obviously been lying on the couch when he was shot. Blood spatters stained the fawn-colored leather.

Beside the couch was a table. Atop the table was an empty glass, an open briefcase and a telephone. The phone was off the hook. The desk drawers had been rifled through; papers were strewn across the floor. A black carry-on suitcase was beside the couch, unopened.

“Senator?” The female medic wrapped a blood pressure cuff around the man’s upper arm. The other paramedic slammed an oxygen mask over his face. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay. We’re here to help.”

“My wife,” Alan Fletcher gasped, his words muffled by the plastic mask. “Help...Laura.”

Trace squatted down, bringing himself eye to eye with the injured man. “Can you tell me what happened, Senator?”

“I heard a s-s-shot.” He stuttered painfully. “Then another. At first I thought it was a dream, you know. By the time I realized they were r-r-real shots, one of the burglars, the one rifling my desk, s-s-shot me.”

“You were downstairs at the time of the shooting?” Trace knew that from the blood spatters, but he wanted to hear the senator’s explanation.

“I got in late.” He drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Even with the oxygen assist, the effort of talking seemed to be giving him great pain. “Damn f-f-flight delays. I didn’t want to wake Laura up, so I just crashed on the couch.”

“When was that?”

“About midnight.”

“Was the security system on when you arrived?”

“No. And I didn’t set it.” He groaned again. “Storms always set the damn thing off. I’ve been promising Laura... Oh, God.” He began to sob. “I had my secretary call the company yesterday. They couldn’t come out until after the fourth.”

He bit his lip and appeared to be struggling for calm. “If only I’d called sooner, this wouldn’t have happened.”

That might be true, but Trace wasn’t into Monday morning quarterbacking. “Did you happen to get a look at the guy who shot you?”

“Not really. He was wearing a mask.”

“A ski mask?”

“Uh-uh...” He closed his eyes. “It was brown. And sh-sh-sheer. Like he’d pulled a nylon stocking over his face.” He sucked in another breath. “Oh, God, it hurts,” he moaned.

“You’re doing great, Senator,” the paramedic advised. “Just try to stay calm. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“I heard the g-g-gunmen run out the door. I t-t-tried to get to Laura after I called 911. I was crawling across the floor. Then I guess I passed out....”

Tears welled up in his light blue eyes and ran down his cheeks in long wet ribbons. “Oh, C-C-Christ. How could this happen?”

No one in the room answered. While the paramedics continued to work on the senator, Trace left the den, gesturing for his deputy to follow.

“Turn on my overhead lights,” he said, handing J.D. the keys to the Suburban the Mogollon County supervisors had included in his deal as an enticement to sign.

It wasn’t every day a big-city crime buster was willing to come to work in the boondocks and they’d wanted to ensure he wouldn’t change his mind once he learned that jaywalking and the occasional drunk and disorderly was about as bad as it got in Whiskey River.

What they hadn’t realized was that Trace would have taken the job without the new truck.

“Check around the outside. See if you can find a point of entry. Also, with all the rain, there should be footprints.”

“Yessir.” J.D. snatched the keys with an enthusiasm that reminded Trace of himself in what seemed another lifetime.

Taking his .38 Detective Special from its hip holster, Trace climbed the stairs, all his senses on alert. The odds of the shooter still being in the house were slim to none. But Trace had the scars to prove that a cop couldn’t be too careful.

He studied the crime scene from the doorway of the master bedroom, his gaze sweeping over the warm pine flooring, the white walls adorned with expensively framed western art. The bed had been handcrafted from cedar logs. The headboard, along with the wall behind it, was marred by a sweeping, red-pink arc.

A quilt had slid halfway off the mattress. In the center of the bed a woman lay faceup, her arms outstretched, as if reaching for something, or someone, no longer there. Her palms were open, her fingers slightly curled. Her green eyes were fixed in an expression of vague surprise Trace had seen before. The drawers of the two nightstands on either side of the bed were open. As were those of the bureau. The contents of the drawers had been tossed haphazardly onto the floor.

Atop the dresser were various perfume bottles, a silver-backed mirror and a crystal-framed wedding picture. The smiling faces of Laura and Alan Fletcher looked out of the frame at the grisly scene. The glittering contents of a mahogany jewelry box had been dumped out, scattered across the gleaming pine planks.

Stepping over the damp towel lying on the floor by the dresser, Trace approached the bed.

Even as he noted absently that Laura Fletcher was still beautiful, even in death, he began to emotionally distance himself. It was not a deliberate decision. Rather, it was as if a self-protective switch had clicked on inside his brain. He’d developed the ability to detach himself early in his career.

In his sixteen years on the Dallas police force, he had been witness to the most basic of human evil—the taking of another life. When faced with the nude body of a female, who only hours earlier had, perhaps, been laughing and loving, a cop could not waste time pondering theological questions about man’s inhumanity to man.

What he had to concentrate on was whether that bloody hole in her breast was an entrance wound or an exit wound. He had to judge the distance and caliber of the weapon that had made that circular wound in her left temple.

And, as he lifted her wrist, clasping the flesh that was already growing icy now that the life had drained out of it, rather than notice that her fingers were long and slender, he took note of the blood on the fingertips of her left hand—which gave evidence that she’d been aware of being attacked—and wondered why it was that the senator’s dead wife wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

J.D. had been right. There was nothing they could do for Laura Fletcher now. Except find her killer.

He took a notebook from his pocket and quickly sketched the position of the body, the bed, the rest of the crime scene. Then he went back downstairs and repeated the process in the den.

The paramedics had stabilized the senator and had him lying on a gurney, ready to wheel him out to the waiting ambulance.

“You taking him to Payson Hospital?”

“That’s the plan,” the paramedic answered. “His wound isn’t critical enough for air evac.”

“I’ll follow you.”

“What about Laura?” Alan Fletcher groaned. “Is she—”

“Don’t worry about her right now,” the paramedic broke in, exchanging a look with Trace. The senator’s color wasn’t good and the way he kept going in and out of consciousness suggested that he could go into shock. This wasn’t the time to tell the man his wife was dead. “Just worry about yourself, Senator.”

Trace followed them out. “Find anything?” he asked his deputy.

“No sign of false entry. But you’re right about the footprints. Got a real good set coming from the driveway. Tire tracks, too.”

“Good.” Trace nodded. “I’m going to call DPS and have them send over their crime lab guys.”

J.D.’s eyes widened at the idea of involving the state Department of Public Safety. “You’re bringing outsiders in?”

“I don’t have much choice,” Trace pointed out. “The average high school chem class probably has more equipment than we do. This is going to be a high-profile case. I want to make sure there aren’t any mistakes made.”

“Ben isn’t going to like this,” J.D. warned.

Ben Loftin. A lifelong resident of Whiskey River, cousin to the mayor, a fifteen-year deputy and the man who’d expected to be promoted to sheriff. From his first day on the job, Trace had suspected Loftin was also one of those redneck bullies who gave cops—especially those in small towns—a bad name.

“Ben Loftin isn’t sheriff,” Trace reminded his deputy gruffly. “I’m going into Payson with the senator. I want you to lock this place up tight and don’t let anyone in until the medical examiner and the crime lab guys get here.”

“Even Ben?”

“Especially Loftin,” Trace stressed. “From what I’ve seen of the guy, his investigative skills would make Barney Fife look like Columbo.”

J.D. began to laugh, then choked it off when one look at his boss’s rigid face told him the comparison hadn’t been meant as a joke. “I’ve got the tape in the trunk of the black-and-white,” he said. “I’ll cordon off the perimeter.”

Once again the deputy’s eagerness reminded Trace of himself and made him feel about as old as dirt. The near-fatal shooting that had taken his partner’s life had left Trace with scars—both physical and mental—that he figured he’d carry for the rest of his life.

“You do that. I’ll check in after I neutron the Senator.”

J.D.’s eyes widened. “You’re going to test the senator for gunpowder residue?”

“He was at the scene of a murder.”

“But he was shot.”

“So was his wife. His dead wife,” Trace said patiently.

“But he’s a senator.”

“And we’re cops. With a job to do. Which includes checking out all possible suspects.”

“Christ, the shit’s really going to hit the fan when this gets out,” the young man muttered.

“Don’t look now, J.D.,” Trace drawled, jerking his head in the direction of the ranch house. “But it already has.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.